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German hacker Thomas Roth's announcement that he used Amazon.com's cloud service to crack a wireless network security standard has left some security researchers scratching their heads. Others are merely shaking them in disbelief That attack was launched against the SHA-1 hash algorithm....

AMD CEO Dirk Meyer abruptly stepped down on Monday. In a public statement, AMD called it a "resignation" that was "effective immediately," which makes it look more like a firing. The company appointed CFO Thomas Seifert as interim CEO. AMD did not respond to the E-Commerce Times' request for comments by press time....

In the U.S., when your neighbor is out of work, it is a slowdown; when your family member is added, it becomes a recession; and when you too join the same line, then it surely becomes a depression. Unofficially, the unemployment rate in the U.S. has been pegged at 15 percent to 25 percent, while the economic turnaround seems a mirage; the closer y...

I can't claim any sort of deep attachment to or experience with the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) since my business IT interests typically fall well outside its typical focus. But I've attended the past couple of shows for two simple reasons. First, vendors are increasingly attempting to inextricably link consumer products to business IT. Apple's...

Oracle is debuting a business intelligence module -- for SAP users. Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP -- a part of Oracle's BI applications product family, release 7.9.7 -- is designed to help SAP users wring more value out of their financial systems. While they are at it, Oracle no doubt hopes, these users may opt to migrate more of their operations to the Oracle platform...

Remember the holographic message Princess Leia sent asking Obi Wan Kenobi for help in the movie "Star Wars"" That's apparently what Android 3.0, code-named "Honeycomb," will make mobile communications seem like "There will be heavy use of 3D-like interfaces throughout to create the impression of a hologram," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the En...

Virtual machines (VMs) have dramatically transformed the way IT organizations approach the computing architecture. Initially employed to provide greater efficiency, server virtualization has quickly revealed that its true benefits are in building an agile data center where resources can be started and stopped as necessary, files are transferred more easily, and disaster recovery and failover are simpler and more reliable. In other words, server virtualization encompasses everything that is characteristic of the modern, dynamic data center and cloud environment...

Intel is turning on the lights, but without light. The chip maker will use copper instead of fiber in its new Light Peak optical interconnection technology, reaching speeds surprisingly better than the company expected, Intel architecture group director David Perlmutter said in a Friday interview with IDG News Service at CES The copper achieved dat...

Preliminary attendance figures from the Consumer Electronics Association indicate more than 140,000 industry professionals showed up to this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) -- the world's largest consumer technology trade show -- which took place last week in Las Vegas, Nev. That figure represents a surge from 2010's 120,000 and 2009's 113,085...

The State Department has begun reaching out to hundreds of people identified in diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, some of which were published recently, The New York Timesreports It has reportedly relocated some locally in their own countries, and others to foreign sites for their own safety....

Think you need a SAS 70 report -- or its replacement, the SSAE No. 16 -- to demonstrate your credentials? You may... but maybe not. Service Organization Controls (SOC) reports are designed to help service organizations build trust and confidence in their processes and controls through a report issued by an independent certified public accountant. Organizations rely on these reports to demonstrate their credentials to their clients or client' auditors. But as CPAs, we often have to explain to our clients which reports they need... or don't need.

In April and May 2010, Aberdeen surveyed 422 executives from a variety of different industries (i.e. manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications), and the results were clear: Rapid forecasters (companies that collect and prepare reliable sales forecasts in less than half an hour) significantly outperform slow forecasters (companies that collect and prepare reliable sales forecasts in more than half an hour) in terms of their current and year-over-year performance in sales effectiveness.

This CES was full of surprises -- from Microsoft announcing Windows on ARM, to both AMD and Intel coming up with solutions no one had seen coming, to Nvidia building a Super ARM blended graphics/processor chip. And the TV company making most of the announcements wasn't Panasonic, Sony or Samsung -- it was little Vizio, which probably gave a lot ...

Attendance-wise, CES is having a fat year. Bloated crowds meanderthrough the show floor's arteries, clumping around deposits of coolgadgets, blocking the flow for those not willing to get a littlephysical and squeeze themselves through Press conferences overflow, locking out anyone who's not in linean hour in advance. Floor walkers do the CES zombi...

The need for more time to repair ominous-looking cracks in metal struts that support space shuttle Discovery's hefty exterior fuel tanks prompted NASA officials Thursday to call for a launch delay, moving the flight from a previously planned early February date to that month's end. The delay, which follows a failed November launch attempt, has NAS...

Top social network Facebook inadvertently revealed that it is preparing to go public with its financial data sometime in 2012. Facebook expects its investor population to exceed 499 this year, it reportedly states in a private placement document leaked to a number of media outlets from Goldman Sachs, which would compel it to disclose tons of financial information.

Last year's CES was 3D TV's great big debutant ball. The world wasshown something kind of cool-looking and told, This is the futureof home entertainment! Behold! Everyone oohed and aahedappropriately, then went out and bought tablets It's OK that 3D TVs still aren't exactly commonplace in the typicalAmerican living room. They're expensive, there's ...

A major source of Facebook's success is its "social graph," a term coined in 2007 by company founder Mark Zuckerberg to describe the network of relationships between Facebook users. Facebook's social graph is a valuable component of the Facebook platform. The robust mapping of relationships and preferences enables Facebook to deliver a personalized and targeted user experience. ...

Consumers today don't want to interact just with other consumers. Increasingly, they expect to interact and communicate directly with brands and companies themselves. Over the past few years, companies have come to see these communities as a valuable asset, nurturing them as part of a brand's offering. The benefits range from better consumer insig...

Forget the notebook, the netbook or the laptop; this is going to be the year of the tablet. Corporations from Salesforce.com to Mercedes-Benz and JPMorgan Chase have started equipping their executives with iPads. Meanwhile, a slew of new Android and Windows tablets have been taking the spotlight at CES this week, bolstering Gartner's prediction that media tablets and next-generation smartphones will increasingly eat into PC sales.